individuals that included the KKK, FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, Alabama governor, George Wallace but in a real sense, most all southern whites as well as many other white Conservatives around the country hated King. These groups and individuals didn’t want him to succeed in life and with his goals to give blacks equal rights.
They were racist and didn’t like the idea of both blacks and white having the same freedom; as if blacks weren’t human beings. On August 28, 1968 during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom he delivered his 17 minute famous speech called “I Have A Dream” by speaking the way he did, he educated, inspired, and he informed not just the people there but people throughout America, unborn generations, and was an inspiration to millions of African-American people. (http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/dreamspeech.htm) When the protests ended, King became the focus of white hatred. Angry white’s tried to kill him and his family by fire-bombing his house (http://rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/january-30-1956-%E2%80%93-martin-luther-king-jr%E2%80%99s-home-was-bombed/). The attempts were unsuccessful. No matter what people did to him he still believed love was more powerful than hate, he believed the law must apply to all citizens equally and that the law be morally just, he believed that it was the content of ones' character that defined a person...not the color of their
skin. He challenged all of us to ask ourselves, what kind of a person are you? Or what kind of person do you want to be? He believed in America's ideal, “We the People...”Which is why it is of vital importance, especially in a society that values freedom and strives to aspire to the land of the free.
In 1968 King was giving a speech in Memphis, Tennessee, called “I’ve been to the mountain top” in front of a huge crowd and was he was shot by an escaped convict named James Earl Ray and died on April 4. 1968. James Earl Ray was sentenced 9 years of jail for murder. No one will ever truly know what this world would have been like if no one spoke up like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did but we can imagine what it would be like. Our nation probably today wouldn’t have equal rights; African Americans wouldn't many rights if any at all, there would be segregation, racism, and different schools for black and white children and have different serving counters at restaurants if he didn’t attempt to do something about it. He kept fighting for his dream of equality until the moment he died. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” He worked hard but his “dream” was accomplished.